Hit & Miss Groom by Nana Malone and Misty Evans

Marketing Program Manager, Vanessa Rodriquez, is driven to succeed and keeps the finish line in sight at all times…until one unexpected pit stop at her best friend’s wedding sends her skidding off course. Sleeping with Alex McIntyre wasn't supposed to make her feel this way—scattered, unfocused, and in need of another sexual tune-up. If only he didn’t make her feel so alive.

Alex can’t resist the beautiful Vanessa any more than he can resist his need for speed as an amateur race car driver. Even though she claims to hate him, she keeps coming back for lap after lap in his bed. When he ends up moving in next door to her, their sexual chemistry turns to deep desire. Ready to go full throttle, he convinces her to be his grid girl on—and off—the track. Van, however, puts on the brakes.

If Van can just course correct, it’ll be smooth sailing toward her goals. Or will it? Alex is smart, sexy, and way too much of a distraction, but maybe she needs to shake up her world and do the one thing she swore she’d never do…follow her heart. Will she risk it all to cross the finish line? Or will she and Alex crash and burn before they have a chance at love?

The battle of the wedding couple’s best friends is what I’d like to call this book, which isn’t really in any way that much of a standout save for the unusual occupation and hobbies that the lead characters have going for them. A meeting at a wedding turns explosive and while the sex is steamy, no-holds barred and hot, ‘Hit & Miss Groom’ is pretty much a tale of two characters wary of emotional ties coming together in a way that isn’t unexpected at all.

My rant here, as I suspect, has much to do with my intense dislike of manwhores and players and my inability to get over their ‘one-and-done’ throwaway attitudes written which I personally think has been treated with so much disrespect especially in fiction. All it took was a short period of time for Alex to turn from manwhore to committed man to potential husband and fiancé and that change for me, is like a flip of a switch, akin to a personality transplant that’s too difficult for me to take in. Convincing Van is an uphill battle – and rightfully so – until he scares himself away and breaks it all off by being a general arse after a long treatise about wanting more than a casual fuck. The grovelling begins, but not after he has some sort of personal revelation that he is in fact, able to do a committed relationship…because it only takes the right woman that he finds irresistible and very very good sex to change his mind.

*cue massive eye-rolling*

And frankly, it’s difficult to swallow when I’ve always been planted in the camp that really thinks that a leopard can’t change its spots. That Alex, like many other players, somehow erases those spots and wears a new coat of whiteness so easily that I’m nearly wont to reject the HEA that follows. Like Vanessa, I couldn’t shake the impression that he was a farce, and unlike her later, that impression never quite changed. I thought that the only thing saving the story was Van herself who was a strong female lead, whose flawed consistency at least, led to me cheer for her and the big girl panties she never failed to pull on when Alex as a lead failed so badly up until the end.

Maybe it’s precisely these flaws – the revolving women, the player changed – that draw such readers to books like these. I’m getting tired, though. Tired and so wary of stereotypes, of characters who blithely walk the straight and narrow paths of these tropes because of mass appeal.